Sidecar couple cap improving season with podium finale

Giles and Jen Stainton had a happy ending to a season of contrasting fortunes EMN-180211-160100002

Published:08:06Saturday 03 November 2018

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Team SaS sidecar racers, Giles and Jen Stainton, capped their season in style with a podium finish in the last race of the 2018 season.

Giles and Jen improved throughout the Mallory Park Race of the Year meeting to take third place in the final EMRA Open Sidecar race.

Passenger Jen, from Market Rasen, said: “Mallory is always quite a good gauge for us and this would be our first dry meeting here since the improvements to set-up earlier in the season, so we were keen to see what we could do.”

After qualifying sixth in a grid of 13 outfits, Team Stainton made good progress through the field in the first of two races, having a great battle for position within the group and recording a fine fifth place at the flag.

Adjustments were made to the mapping before the second race, for the Phil Dongworth Trophy.

But they didn’t get the best of starts and found themselves down in seventh with plenty of work to do to get on terms with the leading group.

New-found confidence around the hairpin and Gerard’s allowed them to make progress, moving up to fifth by lap three, and two laps later they found themselves in fourth.

A final push elevated them up into third for a podium finish with a new personal best lap time of 58secs.

Giles and Jen were delighted with their performance in a year which had started badly.

“It has been a year of highs and lows for us,” said Jen.

“From the very first meeting at Croft where we thought all was lost, to the last couple of months of the season when the persistence started to pay off.

“But truly this year has been special as we have learnt so much about ourselves, each other and the outfit.

“We have come back stronger and can see how much more there is to come.